Originally Posted by LiveUninhibited

Yes and no. More pragmatic and fair than anything. America cannot possibly solve the world's problems, let alone by throwing money and troops at them. So the American government should serve its own citizens just as any other government should.

Picking and choosing conflicts hasn't seemed to work either. Sometimes we try to help and it doesn't work and sometimes our "generosity" is merely looked at as favoritism (Israel).

An analogy would be this. Lets compare the American government to the head of a household, and lets further assume that the head of the household manages the finances of the house, but is not the sole breadwinner. So the bills for the people in the household are equal to or greater than the income of the residents, but these problems pale in comparison to some of the other houses on the block.

It would be selfish for the head of the household to only look after his own interests, but he has the other people in his house to look after. His allegiance is to his family, not to the other houses on the block. It would in fact be unfair if he took money from other income-earners in his house and spent it to help other households.